Understanding childhood, including the one you accompany

France long ranked among the countries where pupils most often repeated a year. The decline of the practice preceded the most rigorous studies of its effects.

A series of experiments from 1998 made the form of a compliment a research topic in its own right. Later work confirmed a mechanism and markedly reduced its size.

A discreet mark on the face, a mirror, and one watches whether the child looks for it on their own body rather than in the reflection. The test is simple; what it measures is much less so.

Responsible eldest, rebellious youngest: the typology is old and popular. Large analyses published since 2015 recover almost nothing of it.

France adopted in 2024 a law on children's image rights. It writes into law a tension between two parental prerogatives.

Associations between family meals and adolescent outcomes are numerous and positive. They probably measure something other than the meal.

One does not randomly assign how an infant is fed. The rare designs that come close have greatly reduced the effects attributed.

French health records changed charts in 2018. The debate turns on a technical distinction with very concrete consequences.

The idea of a window closing for good comes from animal ethology. In humans, the data support a far more flexible version.

Testing an experiment again is difficult everywhere. When the participants are twelve months old, it becomes a problem of organisation as much as of method.

France legislated in 2018 and several countries followed. Available evaluations are few, dated, and their results diverge.

It concerns a majority of families in rich countries and has almost never been evaluated. What exists bears mainly on adult financial behaviour.

Piaget placed around eight months the understanding that a hidden object still exists. Gaze-based methods moved that age, then were contested.

International child well-being league tables circulate widely. Their result depends at least as much on the chosen weightings as on the situations described.